Friday, March 9, 2012

C4T Summary #2

Miguel Guhlin’s motto is, "Transforming teaching, learning and leadership through the strategic application of technology." His teaching career began in 1990 in the classroom and grew to technology leadership, consulting and speaking engagements, he also has co-authored books and has countless articles focusing on educational reform and change, encouraging modeling strategic applications. Currently he is the director of Instructional Technology and Learning Services in Texas. A recent blog post entitled "The Secret to Happiness-Sharing My Good News" told of his long time goal having been achieved. He has been offered a position as "Director of Technology (a.k.a. CTO) for a wonderful school district (9K students) in the San Antonio, Texas area!!!" Beginning this position within the next two months Guhlin shows his appreciation of his current team and shares his excitement for the coming opportunity in this post. Also he adds a short story of "The secret to happiness" in which an old man was granted 3 wishes by an angel in different times of his life. His first wish was, of course, for wealth. When this failed to bring satisfaction he wished for health. When this too fell short of his expectations, the old man lastly asked for the ability to be grateful of all that has happened and will happen in the remainder of his days. Finally, the old man found happiness. The message of being grateful for the good and the bad things that happen in life will benefit all who accept it. Taking the good as gifts and the bad as lessons, experience, and tests. He is an avid blogger making three or more posts daily on his blog. There is always a ton of useful tech info on his blog. Most of which is way over my head, but the most recent post which I commented on Connecting a Desktop to Wireless, shared info on how to inexpensively and easily link an old desk top computer to a wireless network. He made a couple of suggestions, one of them being to purchase from amazon a $6 Wireless G USB 2.0 adapter. This is a great blog to visit for guidance in all area's of need in relation to technology. Only one down side to it, there are soooo many great posts on his blog that you can spend an incredible about of time reading and learning from his expertise that you will get lost within it. I recommend checking it out weekly. Another blog post I commented on was titled Opening Gambit-Creating, Not Criticizingwhere he shared a story from an early lecture he participated in where he remembers feeling like a pinata' and everyone got a whack in on him. His response proved to be a turning point in his career that opened new opportunities, he responded by having everyone write on a piece of paper what they liked about his idea's and what they would do differently. This created a collaboration environment vs. a critical one. I commented on his ability to respond in such a wise manner and can only hope that in the heat of the moment if I am ever in a situation where my ideas are missing the mark, I can learn from his wisdom and use the criticism in such a positive way.